Page 52 of Hades and Persephone: Crown of Souls

I’m rapt with interest, desperate to learn more about this ancient city and the Godly history that surrounds it.

Poseidon obviously senses my desperation for more, because he continues without much pause, “It was Gaia’s rage and ego that led her into the arms of Uranus, and together they became a great and terrible power that ruled the Gods and Pangea for eons. Uranus was the first of the Gods to be known as King, and Gaia his Queen. But their rule never extended into Atlantis. The Golden City was a city of amnesty for the Gods and Goddesses. It was a city bursting with great and terrifying power, never entrusted to a single God. From the center of the city poured a great light that lit the sky, plunging into Olympus high in the clouds.”

“It sounds magnificent.”

“It was, very much.” He sighs as though the next part of his story will bring with it catastrophe. All good stories wrought with wonder are, unfortunately, woven with tragedy. “Gods warred and fell to possess the power that ruling the Golden City would bestow. Primordial Gods and Goddesses with names lost to the passing of time fell in defeat into the seas that surrounded the island, drifting in the oceans until they rooted in their eternal cage. Their calcified remains sentenced to an eternity of punishment, of confinement to the seas even today.” His grin is not sad, but it is not unfeeling either. “You might know them as the small islands that exist today within the deep blue of the seas.”

I gape. “All the islands that exist today—you’re telling me they’re the calcified remains of Primordial Gods and Goddesses who tried to overthrow Chaos to then rule Atlantis?”

Poseidon lifts one long, thick finger. “Not Chaos. Atlantis was—isa sentient island. Atlantis fought to protect herself against the Gods and Goddesses who sought to rule her for the power that ruling her would bestow.” A second finger joins the first. “As for the islands, they are, indeed, the remains of Primordial beings whose ego drove them to the worst punishment.”

“To become islands?”

Poseidon slides his shocking eyes to mine. “To be devoured by time. Their very existence, once worshipped, forgotten by the passing of ages even as their minds, ever active, are trapped within the knowing that their ego imprisoned them to an eternity in which all manner of life would feed from them, without ever knowing it was a God in which provided them the fruits of the land which sustained them. To exist forever in an eternity in which they are not entitled to, nor can they demand, worship. That is the punishment in which Atlantis decreed themworthy and imparted upon those who sought to capture her unwilling power.”

“That’s—” There are no words for such a punishment. For the endless torture they must endure.

“Fitting?” Poseidon nods. “Yes, indeed.”

My lips part on a shocked inhale.

“Atlantis fought her own battles for eons, powering the realms in which existed around her. But no realm was so wonderous, their power as great as the immeasurable power in which sustained the Heart of Atlantis.”

“It sounds breathtaking and tragic.”

“Yes,” Poseidon agrees, but there’s a smile touching his lips that speaks to more than what he simply says. He knows more than he lets on. “Technology on Atlantis was far superior to that which erupted on Pangea, a lesser forgery crafted by the Gods which longed to attain that which came naturally to Atlantis. Time continued this way for a while, Gods striving to replicate the sentient wonder birthed by Chaos. But it was too quickly forgotten that Atlantis wasn’t simply an island like Pangea, a mass of land with the ability to create life—but that she was a Primordial Goddess unto her own, and her power was great.”

“But she sank into the sea?” I can hardly make myself speak the words, and they sound on the hesitant breath that they are. Even now, I feel afraid to offend the sentient island. Like it might rise from the inky depths of the deep and banish me to a fate of aware calcification in the waves.

Poseidon dips his chin, casting his eyes to the glowing sea that dances for him even now. “Atlantis was formed well before my time. It was once rumored that Atlantis was the favorite child of Chaos, the one in which she infused the light of her love, for Atlantisglowed.” Poseidon’s seeing blue eyes settle on me. The weight of them is massive, and for a moment, the very breath in my lungs feels captured, sinking under the seeing weight ofeyes that read too deeply into the abyss of my soul. “The stories of her light remind me much of the glow which erupted from the depths of the Underworld, infused with the gift of your innocence.”

A chill pricks at my skin. “I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

Poseidon doesn’t explain. He simply studies me for so long, I am unable to keep from shifting under the weight of it. Finally, he continues, “It was in the millennia before I was born, that the light that speared from the Heart of Atlantis, began to dim. The power she syphoned into the realms surrounding her lessoned to a point the arteries of power that connected the realms, turned brittle. By the time I was born, although still a great and wonderous power, the glow of Atlantis was significantly duller than it had been in its prime. And the presence of Chaos was entirely absent from the realms, almost as though she hadn’t existed at all.”

“But?” I hold my breath, because there is a but.

There is always a but.

“Greedy little goddess, aren’t you?” Poseidon accuses teasingly. “Yes, there is a but. However, it comes much later.”

“Okay…?”

Poseidon chuckles, but he gets to the point. “Lost to the legend of humanity, but still whispered amongst the Gods, is the fact that Atlantis darkened once again when Cronus castrated Uranus, as though Atlantis had been directly connected to the first King of Gods, and died a little more when the path of his seed into the world was severed.” His pitch dips, the smooth baritone of it turning rough. “There are some who speculate that the creation of Atlantis was not owed in whole to Chaos, but that Uranus had strayed from Gaia, and the sentient island was a product of their affair, and that is why she dimmed yet again when he was castrated.”

“But you don’t believe that…” I hesitate to say it, but the words are pulled from the depths of me. As though they need to fall between us. As though their arrival into the folds of time was written by the very stars that shine life onto us all.

“No, I don’t.” Poseidon presses his lips together thoughtfully. “Time continued to pass, Cronus claiming the title of King of Gods when Uranus took to the sanctuary of the sky. The Olympians were born and swallowed by our father. Rhea’s deception in the birth of Zeus was not only our hope to find release from the prison of our father’s belly, but it was the first step in Cronus’ ultimate demise.”

“I know this story,” I tell Poseidon bashfully. “I know how you all fought to end the reign of Cronus.”

“And you know that Zeus took his crown and title of King of Gods.” When I nod, Poseidon mimics it soberly. “Zeus was the last God to attempt to rule Atlantis. Her glow had drastically faded, but her power was still enough to protect herself from the tyrannical overthrowing of Zeus. But the consequence was a severing of those brittle arteries in which connected the Heart of Atlantis to both Olympus and the Living Realm.”

“But not to the Underworld?”

“No.” Poseidon pulls in a breath, and the sea rises higher over the sand to caress our outstretched legs. He sighs a sigh of pure affection. “No, she clung to her connection to the Underworld. This is important, so listen closely now,” Poseidon warns me. “By this time, Hades had battled and trapped the soul of Uranus, stripped of his Godly form, in the bowels of Tartarus.”

“I don’t understand why this is important.”

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